


the boys are too refined.

by fumerie (grisclair)



Series: The Fame series [1]
Category: Super Junior
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Drunk Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-01
Updated: 2010-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:54:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grisclair/pseuds/fumerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[model AU] in which Lee Sungmin is good at financial reports and Cho Kyuhyun is a jailbait model, but they're still variations of the same theme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the boys are too refined.

  


_"it's much more fun being torturers than models,_  
 _because we're beautiful and we need to cause pain."_  
\- the coming storm (paul russel)

-

  


  


Lee Sungmin's childhood had always been surrounded by women. His mother with her collection of vintage Guerlain Mitsouko perfume bottles. His older female cousins with their white sundresses and red kitten heels. His teachers with their bundled hair and tight-lipped smiles. His highschool female classmates with their cutesy phone charms and fake eyelashes.

His mother told him, "You have to pursue beauty, because that's the only kind of romance left in this world."

His cousins tried to dress him up in babydoll dresses and sunshine ballet flats. His teachers never paid much attention to him.

A girl in his class told him, "The only way to find love is you must never, ever be boring."

  


-

  
Sungmin's father sent him to a private business school as a coming-of-age birthday present. He called Sungmin into the office and handed him the brochure, all thirty-two pages of glossy papers and painted smiles. There was probably a lot of hopes and dreams and expectations in that little book, so Sungmin sat down in the rosewood chair and flipped through the pages, listening to his father's low voice talk about family business and economics and the bottom lines. The soft sunshine flooded the room with a faded tired hue, warm and forgotten on his skin. His father looked ancient behind the huge glossy desk, and Sungmin looked around the room with its stark European paintings and soft wool carpet, thinking about how all of this could be his one day if he wanted to. He guessed the question was just whether he wanted it.

Young people never knew what they wanted, so they always took the easy way out. Sungmin said yes and took the brochure back to his room.

Looking back on it, it wasn't like he ever regretted what he did. Business school was logical, simple, and straightforward. All that he had to learn was profit, profit, and profit. Everyone smiled the same kind of smile that said "I'm just in this for the money," all the guys with their silver Zegna cufflinks and all the girls with their red Louboutin heels. He went out with a group of friends every Friday night to a swanky wine bar up the street, listening to all these beautiful privileged kids talk smack about life. An older girl leaned against his shoulder, the crimson curve of her full lips touching the cashmere of his sweater.

"I'd love to be a writer, but good stories these days are all about selling and buying. Money speaks a special form of glamour now."

Everyone nodded and chirped in their agreement, loud and raucous and obnoxious about what they could have been without business schools and income statements. Post-modern artists and rock band singers and high-school teachers and fusion cuisine chefs. Sungmin held out the glass of Merlot for her, smiling softly. "Miyoung noona, of course you could still write. You're good with numbers."

She looked up to his face, the curve of her lips soft and warm, her laughter high and breathy. "Sungmin-ah, you know how this works. I could write a story about how hard it is to be blessed and privileged, but it would take a lot of effort to dress up. My pretty glamorous words are only effective up to a certain point. I wish I could make balance sheets and cash-flow statements into love stories, but I'm really not good enough for that yet." Miyoung's skin smelled like harsh medicinal herbs and burnt wood. She could recite The Pill Book from back to front. She could tell the family therapist the right words for more than a few signatures on useless prescriptions. She could sell those little blue and white pills for three times the market price at the fire exit stairways of their school. 

"I used to scribble the chemical structure for methamphetamine on the back of drugstore receipts every night and thought it was so romantic, but you know what? It's all so boring now. Science is already an old art. The only interesting thing left is financial statements. What kind of story can you tell, Sungmin-ah?"

  


-

  
The day when he first met the scrawny kid that was Cho Kyuhyun, Sungmin's eyes were glazed over from the little heart-shaped pink pills and he was plastered against a giggling Miyoung in the backstage of some fashion show he could barely remember the name of. She had wanted someone to go with her to a show sponsored by her father's company, and so he tagged along simply because he was there and having nothing better to do on a Thursday night. Getting backstage for the sponsor's daughter and her wobbly friend was easy enough, and while she immediately took off towards some pretty male thing she had apparently been eyeing, Sungmin wandered around aimlessly, poking at colour palettes and rabbit fur brushes. Without his human pillar, Sungmin's balance didn't quite right itself. He had only taken less than ten steps before stumbling over some bags on the floor and into some warm body. Wiry arms wrapped around him and slender fingers clutched at his shoulders. Sungmin looked up, swaying lightly on his feet.

"Hey, watch where you're going."

The smooth voice ran like dark honey through him, and Sungmin froze as he took in the person who was holding his body upright. Tall, very tall, dark eyes and sharp cheekbones and a frown on his forehead, but this- this was obviously nothing but a young boy, all awkward and stilted motions. A beautiful one though. 

It wasn't like Sungmin had never seen his fair share of the beautiful young things around him, but here, right here, high out of his mind in the backstage of a show he couldn't remember the name of, everyone was beautiful in that sense of the unreal. An army of the unreal people from an unreal haven. The word "fake" would sound wrong, because sharp angles and straight lines and cutting bones were the furthest away from fake. It looked a little like perfection, all these vibrant colours and non-colours, so Sungmin tilted his head and placed a kiss on the boy's jaw line, the way his cousin would kiss a doll just for being beautiful.

The arms yanked him backwards, and Sungmin laughed as the young boy cursed, wiping at his jaw.

"My name is Sungmin. Lee Sungmin." Sungmin held out his right hand, his left hand still clutching tightly at the boy's elbow. The boy's frown deepened. He stared at Sungmin's outstretched hand like it was an offensive gesture, but his grip loosened after a few beats.

"Cho Kyuhyun."

Sungmin smiled and leaned in, pressing his lips against the young boy's, breathing in mineral powder and hair gel and metropolitan smoke.

  


-

  
"Sungmin, you cradle-robber, I can't believe you. And here I thought you were into older women. I'm so disappointed, honey." It was the morning after, and Miyoung had her hands upon her heart and an amused smirk on her lips.

"How old is he actually?" Sungmin figured he didn't really want to know, but she would have made it a point to rub in his face anyway. He probably shouldn't have tried to make out with the kid in the middle of a crowded room. Miyoung had laughed like a hyena when she dragged him off so the show could start.

"Seventeen, according to the backroom gossip." Her eyes seemed to glisten, and Sungmin resisted the urge to bury his head between his knees.

"He's just a kid."

"Of course he is. Though apparently that didn't stop you. Still, you've got pretty good taste. Boy is cute, abeilt looking a little bitchy. Do you want to know what agency he is from?"

"No." Sungmin shook his head, remembering the feel of wrist bones in his grip.

"Why not? I could find out for you if you want to. Wouldn't you like to see him again?"

"Noona, don't. It doesn't matter. Just a chance encounter after all. I was just being stupid, and I'd rather not embarrass myself again."

  


-

  
Sungmin tried to forget all about it, he really did. He didn't regret having a little taste of what was under the glamour, but he accepted it as it was - just a passing moment. Except he was still haunted by the taste of pigmented glitter eyeshadow on his lips and the way that boy's angles sharpened in the brilliant light.

Marketing plans and financial reports were easy enough, so he went to sign up for classes in the evening. By the time he graduated, Sungmin came back into his father's office and explained how he just got an internship in one of the biggest fashion studios in the country. He could still make money, he said, and his father frowned but made him promise to open his own firm in five years time. He got five years of the teenage rebellious phase he'd never had, his father said. Sungmin told himself he was not chasing after a frivolous dream, but sometimes he remembered protruding bones and glitter powder and he wasn't so sure. He started seeing the young boy named Cho Kyuhyun in various editorials, but he never quite looked like what Sungmin wanted to remember him as, so Sungmin stopped looking.

(Except there was this one editorial he cut out and kept in the small leather notebook he carried around to make notes on styling. In the picture, Kyuhyun was shown half-naked from the back, the curve of his shoulder muscles and buttocks soft in contrast against his half-turned profile of sharp and perfect angles. Locks of hair fell on top of his dark eyes, and a soft blush spread across his cheeks. Still, what really struck him was the split on Kyuhyun's lower lip, reddened and painful.)

  


-

  
It wasn't until two years later that Sungmin met Cho Kyuhyun again in the backstage of Daisuke Obana's show a March afternoon during Tokyo Fashion Week. Tokyo in transition between the last days of winter and the beginning of spring was nostalgically overcast and quietly thrumming with the promise of life. Sungmin had spent an entire week wishing for rain, but he supposed the early bloom of carnation in front of the Garden Hall that day was enough compensation. When the models poured in, humming and bickering in good humour, Sungmin started opening his station. The concept was classic architecture of America in the 1920s, or so he'd been told. He looked up to the big sign that said "SKY SCRAPER" hanging on the main wall and smiled.

His hairstylist partner and he worked in companionable efficiency - slicking back dark hair with linear side-parts, painting classic metropolitan and subtle arrogance. Golden old America in modern day Tokyo. The models rushed by in monochromatic hues and shadows of towering capes and collars. He had been around long enough by then not to be mesmerized anymore by perfect bone structures and sculpted angles, but not enough for all the faces to blur together. Sungmin froze when he turned and saw a familiar quirk of the lips. Kyuhyun tilted his head, grinning at him.

"And so we meet again, Sungmin hyung."

If it was even possible, Kyuhyun looked a bit sharper around edges than the last time they met. He had lost the little baby fat he used to have in his early teenage days, but that was only if Sungmin looked closely past the stretch of his smile muscles. Perhaps it would be a lie if he said he had never expected to see Kyuhyun there simply because he was irresponsible enough not to check his list of models. Perhaps he had just been trying to suppress the notion. Reality had pretty much caught up though, so Sungmin mechanically sat Kyuhyun down and got down to it, painting insolent perfection and 1920s teenage angst. Kyuhyun didn't say anything else, his dark eyes boring holes into Sungmin the entire time. If it shook him to the core, knowing that Kyuhyun still remembered his name and possibly everything that had happened, Sungmin never showed it.

He watched from backstage as Kyuhyun casually strolled down the runway in front of a landscape of cosmopolitan New York in the early twentieth century, all skyscrapers and stock markets and obnoxious individualism on a pretentious techno loop of some monochromatic objectivist movie dialogues from the 1940s. Kyuhyun looked a little like the nouveau riche embodiment of all that his father wanted him to be, so Sungmin turned away.

By the end of the show, when Kyuhyun shrugged out of the retro double-breasted number and asked if he wanted to go for a drink, Sungmin said no. Sungmin said no, because he knew the last thing he needed in his life was a pretty young thing cracking around the edges.

  


-

  
Except they kept bumping into each other in Tokyo that dreary week of March. It wasn't even just at shows or events, but also this one time Sungmin crossed the park near his place to go grocery shopping. He was starting to suspect that Kyuhyun was stalking him, but then again he couldn't think of a reason for it, because if anything, Sungmin should be the stalker. That one afternoon when Sungmin found Kyuhyun wandering around the park near his place with a camera, looking a little lost and ridiculous, Kyuhyun asked him to go to a hot spring with him, and Sungmin said yes.

They took the shuttle bus down to Odaiba and went for dinner first. Kyuhyun polished off his katsudon in ten minutes and laughed at Sungmin's incredulous stare. He rambled about his family and friends in Seoul as Sungmin slowly picked apart his bento, smiling and nodding at appropriate places during Kyuhyun's stories.

"It's actually my first time coming to Tokyo. I was trying to find this small shrine in the park when you appeared out of nowhere." 

Sungmin made non-committal noises, unsure how to respond to Kyuhyun's unfamiliar familiarity and childish cheerfulness.

"You know what they say about Tokyo?" Kyuhyun picked at his red ginger, drawing out with wasabi what looked like a bizarre space ship.

"What?"

"It's a soulless city. Nothing but money, money, and stock markets. The capital of the world economy and all that."

Sungmin looked up from his miso soup. "That's sweet."

"I know right? Once you grow up in Seoul you're pretty much destined to be in love with bright lights big cities your entire life. The first time I went to Bali for an editorial shoot, I got all nostalgic for the air pollution."

It was nice and peaceful, he supposed, if he intentionally forgot who and what they were and just pretended they were long-time friends on a holiday trip. And so he ignored it when Kyuhyun excused himself to the rest room and came back ten minutes later with his knuckles more than a little reddened. It was easy to forget if he just looked the other way. Kyuhyun let him pay for the meal because the younger man was an insolent brat. When they arrived at the bath house, Kyuhyun took nearly half an hour to choose a yukata to his taste.

"I've always wanted to try wearing a kimono." Kyuhyun held the fabric up excitedly, and Sungmin snorted.

"That's a yukata."

"Oh, right." Kyuhyun grinned, completely unabashed.

In the hot steam, completely stripped off of all foundation and concealer, Sungmin thought Kyuhyun looked a little impossibly young. Then Sungmin remembered he really was. Then Kyuhyun got them a few bottles of sake, and Sungmin soon forgot why that mattered at all.

  


-

  
The taxi ride back to his place was one of the most uncomfortable rides Sungmin had ever experienced in his life, including that one time there was another couple going to second base right next to him in the backseat and the one time a girl was puking on him every five seconds. Okay, so maybe this ride was not exactly embarrassing per se, but he could feel tension and anticipation and heat waves rolling off in freaking tsunami in the small space they shared. And that was the worst, really, because the way Kyuhyun’s fingers touched him constantly through the layers of his coat and clothing shouldn’t have felt so good, because there were rules, he was drunk, they were both drunk, and there would certainly be regrets in the morning after.

Yet he could barely bring himself to care, with the way he kept leaning closer and closer to the wandering touches, his head coming to rest against Kyuhyun’s shoulder as he brushed his wet lips against the nape of the other's neck, pressing fleeting kisses and tasting salt and smoke. He could feel the way his eyes were glazing over and then fluttering shut as pleasurable tingles ran down his spine and throughout his body. Heat was pooling slowly in his stomach, making him feel heady and drunk more than ever, head spinning with the rolling waves of desire.

Kyuhyun made no protest as Sungmin's fingers trailed along his thighs and dipped in lightly, prying his legs apart. The younger man bit his lips as if to prevent a whimper from escaping him in the next breath. Kyuhyun felt hot all over, relaxed and pliant under the his maneuvering. Sungmin's hands were running up and down his thighs now, inching higher and higher with every stroke. Just as Sungmin was fervently wishing that there had been no layer of thick cotton between Kyuhyun's skin and his own hand, the car came to a stop. He was in a daze as Kyuhyun dragged him out of the taxi and into the building.

The stumble into the elevator and up to his apartment was less than graceful, and Sungmin had a distant thought that perhaps he should have cleaned up the entrance a little better without too many boxes and random shoes lying around, but in the end he could care less as suddenly he found himself plastered against the wall with a warm body pressing flush against his own and a hot wet mouth devouring his lips as soon as their overcoats and shoes were shed. Kyuhyun’s lips were soft and insistent against his own. The younger man tasted like the sake he had stolen from Sungmin earlier, and he could feel the alcohol sing in his blood.

When Sungmin dragged Cho Kyuhyun back to his bedroom that night, everything felt a little too bright and dizzying. The last thought he had was that Kyuhyun should have been easy and casual and not another clusterfuck of _issues_ and feelings, and that he would really seriously absolutely end up having a lot of regrets about the body that ended up in his bed that night.

 

When his weary body slowly decided to wake up, the sun was a soft incandescent glow behind the blurry curtain, but he knew it was already the afternoon hours. The air in his apartment felt cold and heavy. Kyuhyun had already left. His body felt hot and stuffy, his head was spinning with dizziness and horrible waves of nausea, and Sungmin wasn’t surprised to feel alcohol thrumming in his blood still. It always took a while to get out of his system, the same as any other drug.

  


-

  
Kyuhyun turned up at the next show in his aviator sunglasses, the lower part of his face blank and icy. A few of the Japanese boys immediately fluttered around him, gesturing and laughing at something. Kyuhyun simply shrugged and made his way towards the make-up station, throwing himself down at the chair. Sungmin frowned, looking at the way the same boys had just grabbed onto another newcomer.

"What's that all about?" 

Kyuhyun slowly took off his sunglasses. "I think we're holding this competition." His eyes looked bloodshot. Sungmin wanted to physically flinch, but he didn't.

"Competition? On what?"

"Either who could be the most fucked up this season or simply just who could hold out the longest without eating. I'm not so sure to be honest." Kyuhyun's lips curved, but he was resolutely not making any eye contact.

Sungmin wanted to ask who was winning, but then he realized he wouldn't care much for that anyway. He started blending his foundation. "All of you are a self-obsessed, histrionic bunch." He could feel Kyuhyun freeze next to him, the younger man going completely still for a few beats. When he finally spoke, it was in a quiet whisper.

"I guess that's why you and I hit it off so well. We were both raised to chase after the same thing."

"And what would that be?"

"Attention. Entertainment. Being not-boring. We all compete to be the one with the most fucked-up story because that's the only way we know how to make the world look at us. You get it, don't you?"

Sungmin's hand holding the foundation sponge halted mid-motion. Something burned at the pit of his stomach, and he didn't want to pause to recognize it. Perhaps he wanted to be angry, but he didn't know why. Déjà vu was cutting it lightly. "You want attention? Do you even know how it works?" His voice came out as an angry hiss, and Sungmin ignored the way Kyuhyun's dark eyes bore into him.

  


-

  
"Do you even know the tricks to become an entertaining trainwreck and not just a, you know, pathetic traffic accident no one cares about? Do you think you know everything?"

Sungmin made long sweeping motions with the sponge across Kyuhyun's forehead, his eyes bright and hard. "First thing you have to know is, your misery is boring. Personal pain is boring, suffering is boring, depression is boring, melodrama is boring. Everyone gets the same old shit repeated day after day, month after month, year after year. They've had enough of their own misery, they don't need to see yours as well." The sponge went down to Kyuhyun's cheekbones and up to the edge of his ears. 

"The first trick is you have to dress it up. Pretty words, flowery imagery, glamour and irony. Who wants to see something ugly? No one, even if it's the truth. Especially if it's the truth. You have to make pain beautiful." Sungmin's lips curled up into a smile as he carefully brushed a sheen of Desert Sand talc across Kyuhyun's delicate puffy eyelids. "And then you step out into the light. You tell the whole world your story and let them eat it up.

"The second trick to make your misery entertaining is you have to be funny about it. Everyone loves a good chuckle. Be witty, be humorous, be humble, be ironically self-deprecating. Everyone loves to see bad fortune when they can be amused about it with no guilt attached because you've already made it fair game in the first place.

"The third trick is that you have to make them empathize with you. Sympathy is out of style, no one does it anymore and you don't want it in the first place anyway. Empathy is the new black now. They don't have to feel sorry for you, they just need to feel like they have something in common with you, like they're living your story themselves. We don't have enough energy to be sad for another person, the only one we care about is ourselves. The way to do this," he smudged light oily balm across Kyuhyun's bottom lip, the pouty lips warm and soft under his fingertips, "Tell your story like it's your audience's story. Play it up in second person narrative.

"And that is how you put on a show. That is how you make your sorry-assed life a spectacular spectacle. That is how you do attention-whoring."

  


-

  
Thursday evening, when his phone buzzed and the screen flashed Kyuhyun's name, Sungmin did a double take. It took him until the second call to realize Kyuhyun had programmed his own number into his phone that one morning before he left. Sungmin never picked up the calls.

  


-

  
The calls came intermittently but Kyuhyun never seemed to give up. Sungmin ignored the incessant buzzing as he started packing for his flight back to Seoul. To be honest he didn't even know where Kyuhyun was then. Sungmin boarded the plane one bright morning by the end of March, Narita Airport bustling with tourists waiting for the beginning of spring. As he disassembled his phone, taking out the Japanese sim card and sliding in his Korean one, Sungmin said his goodbye to Tokyo and the last days of winter.

He was back to the streets of Seoul mere hours later, feeling distinctly disconnected and nostalgic for something he couldn't grasp. The shops looked a little foreign and the people a little unfamiliar. Even the skyscrapers' mass of metal and cement seemed different somehow. Sungmin took out his phone, expecting missed calls, only to remember the calls wouldn't be coming anymore. He took a taxi back to a his parents' house. His father had sent an e-mail, wanting to talk to him about the possibility of opening a small cosmetic branch in the company.

The call came at eleven in the evening. Sungmin stared at the familiar flashing number on the screen that he had managed to remember by heart. He even fished out the Japanese sim card from his wallet to make sure he was using his Korean one. Sungmin picked up the call on the seventh ring.

"Kyuhyun. How did you get this number?"

The other end of the line was noisy with raucous shouts and laughter and pounding bass and drums, but Sungmin could still hear a quiet curse of shock. Kyuhyun was in a bar, and Kyuhyun hadn't been expecting him to pick up. When Kyuhyun started talking, he rushed over his words as if he was afraid Sungmin would change his mind any second and end the call. "I found your Korean number listed in your own contact list. Sungmin hyung, you were an asshole."

Sungmin made a strangled noise. "I was the asshole? Have you looked into a mirror lately?"

"I tried to call you a thousand times after that but you never picked up."

"Kyuhyun, it doesn't matter." Sungmin rubbed his head, leaning against the window. "Don't contact me anymore-"

"Sungmin- Sungmin hyung. Why did you pick up?"

Sungmin paused. Even in the loud racket, Kyuhyun's slur sounded strange. "Kyuhyun, how much did you drink? Get your ass into a cab and go home."

There was loud laughter from the other end. "I don't know. I can't. My feet don't really work anymore. I tried throwing up but I can't. Isn't that ironic? I think someone gave me this white pill... Sungmin hyung I can't I can't-" Kyuhyun's voice dissolved into hysterical laughter, and Sungmin cursed.

"Shit, Kyuhyun. Get someone to get you into a cab."

"Did you know you're my number one on speed dial, Sungmin hyung? If I pass out from alcohol poisoning right now, the first one they're going to call is you. I really. I was. I didn't mean it." Kyuhyun's breath came in loud gasps and Sungmin could feel the heat slowly drain off his face.

"Kyuhyun. Where are you?"

"Are you coming?" The younger man laughed hysterically on the other end of the line, his breathing in staccato gasps. "Hongdae, I think. You know. M2? Don't come though."

"I'll be there in twenty minutes. Don't go anywhere."

"No wait-"

Sungmin strode out, grabbing his jacket and car keys, sliding his phone shut.

  


-

  
His whole body was vibrating, from what, Sungmin wasn't sure. His palms were getting clammy on the wheels, and a fleeting thought crossed his mind that the long forgotten symptoms were almost comforting. Blinking hard, Sungmin snapped out of it and steered his car towards the glittering night street. He thought about how he had long since given up on not making mistakes, and Cho Kyuhyun was just another one off the list. Sungmin sort of wanted to cry, but he had never been the crying type.

Seoul night was dry and harsh and familiar under the flashing neon lights. Packing his car up the street, Sungmin rushed down to the bar Kyuhyun had told him, but just as he nearly reached the entrance, a shout jerked him back.

"Sungmin hyung!"

Sungmin froze, turning back. There was Kyuhyun, standing on the side of the street, looking frail and impossibly young in the cold wind without any make-up. Sungmin thought Kyuhyun looked possibly just as stricken as he was. Sungmin dazedly made his way over, grabbing the younger man's arms in a tight grip.

"Kyuhyun?"

His eyes roamed over the young model, taking in his clear eyes and the way Kyuhyun held himself steady on his feet.

"What...?"

"I'm sorry, I lied. I only had two drinks and no one gave me anything. That's why I tried to tell you not to come, but then I realized this would be my only chance left to see you."'

  


-

  
The punch came as a given. Kyuhyun bowled over, cradling his jaw and cursing loudly at the pavement.

"Why." Sungmin couldn't even comprehend whether what he was feeling was intense relief or righteous anger or some horrible mix of both. It felt like something was bursting out of his chest at the sight of Kyuhyun on his feet in front of him, still as beautiful and horrifyingly insufferable as ever.

"I suppose the chemicals in my head are all fucked up right now, which is why I've been nothing short of violently depressed." Kyuhyun spit out, slowly straightening up. His eyes were nothing but ill-concealed joy.

"That is such a lie. You don't know shit about depression, Kyuhyun." Sungmin snapped, whirling back and stalking away to refrain from punching Kyuhyun's face on the other side.

Kyuhyun had the decency to laugh. "You're right. I don't. I still like playing it though."

Kyuhyun rushed after him back to his car, and despite slamming the car door loudly, Sungmin made no protest as Kyuhyun quickly opened the other door and slid into the passenger seat next to him. They sat in silence for five minutes, Sungmin gripping the wheel tightly and staring straight ahead. He suddenly let out a long shaky breath, his shoulders slumping in defeat over the wheel.

"Why. Why are you doing this."

Kyuhyun exhaled quietly. "You and me, we're just privileged city kids who know nothing about suffering and the outside world. The only excitement we have in our lives is what we choose to do to ourselves. Everything I do is an attempt to seem less boring, but to tell the truth I don't think that's working out so well."

"You did all this out of boredom?"

Kyuhyun was silent for a few beats, seeming like he was mulling over it. "No."

"It never did work out for me." Not the pills, not the glitter eyeshadows and rabbit fur brushes, not the rail thin models and their semi-tragic histrionic self. Ativan, Halcion, Valium, Xanax, Vicodin, Dexedrine. Sungmin mentally counted in his head. It had always been easier to memorize marketing theories than accounting for all the little chemical pills that slid down one's throat. In the end he still took the easy way out. "I'm still a functional normal human being."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"Isn't it?" Sungmin glanced at Kyuhyun's perfect sharp angles in the suffocating street lights.

"Let's go home, Sungmin hyung." Kyuhyun turned to stare straight ahead, and Sungmin started the car.

  


-

  
They ended up in Kyuhyun's apartment. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, the younger man's face looked horridly swollen and oddly beautiful in that pretentious self-destructive way. Sungmin winced as he applied the ice pack on Kyuhyun's cheek.

"You've just put me completely out of work for two weeks. You have to take full responsibility this time." The young model grinned up at him from his position on the couch. Sungmin had taken one clear look at Kyuhyun's bloodshot eyes and tried to force him to go to bed, but Kyuhyun refused to go inside the bedroom and instead made them camp out on the couch.

"Why are you like this? Why me?" Sungmin said quietly, eyes glued to the flashing TV screen playing some loud and vapid idol music programs. "I can't be that interesting for anyone to even notice. I make sure of that."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Kyuhyun leaned closer, almost half lying on his lap, the smell of burning leaves and artificial cosmetic citrus both jarring and comforting. "The first time we met, you were an obnoxious rich ass on the verge of a drug overdose. You practically molested an underaged kid in public."

"I wasn't." Sungmin winced, as if the idea still burned him. "I mean. I'm not like that anymore though. I grew up. I have five and ten-year plans. I invest in potential business and company stock holdings."

"That's nice." Kyuhyun chuckled, and Sungmin wasn't even sure if the younger man was commenting on his boring life or the annoyingly cheery boy group with eye-popping bowties on the screen. "You can make lots of money and be my partner slash sponsor when I establish my own clothing line."

"You can't pull an Yves Saint Laurent even if you want to, Kyuhyun. You have absolutely no sense of style. You don't even know the difference between jade and turquoise." Sungmin rolled his eyes. Kyuhyun grinned and waved him off. They sat in silence for another fifteen minutes, staring at obnoxious bubblegum pop acts in their versions of real life fashion disasters.

"I googled 'alcohol with fewest calories but highest alcohol' last night." Kyuhyun suddenly spoke.

"What was the result?"

"Why, so you can copy my diet?"

They drifted off to sleep in the early hours of morning, Sungmin's fingers resting on Kyuhyun's aching eyelids.

  


-

  
It was the Spring show for Alexis Mabille at the Oratoire du Louvre in Paris, and the church was calm and bright in the brilliant heat of the summer. Kyuhyun frowned at him in the mirror as he brushed a light sheen of dark blush across his cheekbones. From the corner of the mirror, they could see a certain Chinese model with nose a little too sharp and legs a little too long. Sungmin allowed himself a soft smile as he caught Zhou Mi looking back, eyes wide and wondering.

"He likes you, Kyuhyun-ah."

Kyuhyun jerked under his hands. "You say that like it matters."

Sungmin picked up a throwaway daisy fallen from the basket of wild flowers the hairstylist was using to sprinkle the models' hair with, tucking it into the younger man's dark locks. "Well, what did you ever say about playing the show and never being boring?"

Kyuhyun's slender fingers reached up to tangle with his own. 

"They say romance is back in fashion, but I don't think this is quite right."

  


\---

  



End file.
